Practicing in the Elements

[dragonprawn]

Hi All,
During the pandemic access to our kwoon was limited and I wasn't teaching much. I had the use of two outdoor courtyards and practiced "in the elements" pretty much every day (mostly Yang long form and some weapons). Wore holes in many shoes. My apartment is small for form practice but ok for nei kung. It was kind of cool just to focus mostly on my own development for a couple of years with the birds and squirrels watching, and I really feel I made gains.
Anyway, the winters have not been too bad here in NYC and practice warms me up anyway. But when it is windy (and winds seem stronger than ever) I think to what I had read regarding prohibitions to practice. I get through the form anyway, but I do feel practicing in wind is not so great. Yesterday there were strong gusts and I often felt uprooted when on one leg.
I am not too concerned, but I just did a quick search and found this article, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234349/

[yeniseri]

Practicing in the Four Seasons actually is an overview of the "16" phases within and between the phases.

1. In WInd, practice in a place where you are not facing the wind and dress accordingly
2. In Heat "hot weather" practice in a less hot location as opposed to midday and 100 degrees.

Within the circadian 12 "hour" schedule (ziwuliuzhu), there are parts of that day where certain methods are done to help the "organ' resonance at that period
For informational purposes and background: https://chronoacupuncture.com/ziwuliuzhu.php

Similar: https://chronoacupuncture.com/nazifa.php

[dragonprawn]

Thank you. I will check it out.

[Bhassler]

I train outside all year, as well. I think it can be a lot less esoteric. If it's windy, skip the form and do simpler things like drills where you can work on being solid and don't have the delicate transitions of form work. When it's hot is a good time to work on deep stances, as your muscles and whole body are naturally warm. Etc. I prefer to let theory help in articulating the experiences of practice, rather than trying to force my practice to conform to what I think the theory is supposed to mean.

[dragonprawn]

Makes sense. I tend to soldier through the form anyway, but I do find wind to be more disruptive than temperature and humidity changes. For that matter one outside courtyard is paved with asphalt and the other is concrete, which are different enough to matter and yet I still don't have a preference. And then when I get inside to a good wood floor everything works better.

[wayne hansen]

I find the opposite is true
Form is better to train in the wind it is like pushing with a partner
Drills with less movement will tend to let Pervasive energy’s entre thé body

[dragonprawn]

Interesting. Like I said, I tend to do my nei kung (standing, etc.) indoors (mostly because I don't want anyone seeing that), so I am not able to analyze any negative effects of elements on that. I do go cruising at least once a year for decades. At first I would try to get in the onboard yoga studio before they begin (good floors but still ship movement), but lately they don't unlock those doors early. More recently I go to the shuffleboard courts to the side of the jogging path (a blue rubber surface) or similar (sometimes more "grainy"). Anyway, that is a real challenge of ship movement and wind. It's fun enough and even if not optimal beats a blank, as they say.

[everything]

no idea about wind, but hugging cheee as tree hugging hits different as the kids say. doesn't need to be outdoors.

[origami_itto]

I've found that simple cold is not much of a big deal if you're dressed appropriately. Like down to the 30s maybe, here in the south. Warmups and standing and I'm cooking and would take off my outer jacket to do forms.
Wind, also, not a big deal. A little more feedback. If your root is so weak as to be toppled by normal winds at ANY point during your taijiquan form, please, come to florida so we can figure out what's broken and do a little hurricane work.
Cold wind is another matter, it rips through my clothes and just strips away the heat. If I don't have gloves then I just can't tolerate it.
The beach is always fun, you get wind AND shifting sands to stay steady on while stepping. Come train with me....
The cruise ship thing, also fun and challenging, haven't done that in years.
Too much sun and like any time you run the risk of burns, but a little bit of sun is nice.

I prefer a nice patch of smooth dirt ringed by grass under a nice tree with a little sun filtering through and a warm gentle breeze in the high 60s-low 70s

[greytowhite]

We train in the park most of the year until it gets too hot and I'm usually the only one out there. I start late enough in the day for people to be able to show. As part of the psoriatic disease I occasionally struggle with Reynaud's so I'm a little more sensitive to the cold than most. Doing Sancai in 122 Phoenix summer always sucks.

[Ad_B]

I thought that the prohibitions of practising in unhealthy climate or weather extremes might be because the idea of Daoyin/Qigong preparation might be to find a Wuji structural, biological and mental happy medium before Taiji practise and that is difficult if too hot/cold/dry/wet etc and that winds/draughts in particular, heralds of disturbance wether internal or external variety, should probably be avoided in order to acheive that ?

Give me a warm soft breeze after a hot summers night in the cool of the dawn at sunrise and i'm in heaven.

A lazy Arctic draught that cuts through the clothing and chills the bones?....not so much.

Avoiding extremes?

[yeniseri]

I thought that the prohibitions of practising in unhealthy climate or weather extremes might be because the idea of Daoyin/Qigong preparation might be to find a Wuji structural, biological and mental happy medium before Taiji practise and that is difficult if too hot/cold/dry/wet etc and that winds/draughts in particular, heralds of disturbance wether internal or external variety, should probably be avoided in order to acheive that ?

Avoiding extremes?

Just a note to say that qigong/daoyin does not need to be done before Taiji practice only because taiji when done in a 'traditional' manner has always had neigong elements within practice (conditioning/jibengong)
Specifics such as wujizhuang, taijizhuang fa (posture holding) etc are all part of overall practice.

[Appledog]

The reason why you are advised not to practice in the wind or in the rain, not to do 'swimming tai chi' or things like this, is not because it will damage your balance system but because of something a bit more high level, something you are not able to feel until much much later.

Your body has various systems and levels of systems, such as qi system, jing system, five organs system, yin and yang systems, spiralling, and so forth. Various areas are also connected to each other in strange and suprising ways you do not know about and mostly can never know or understand directly or feel.

To put it as bluntly as possible your body's heat system is tied directly to your qi system, although they are separate and different. So some people think that your qi is your heat, at least on some level. And your heat system is tied directly to your immune system.

I will just tell you straight up and it's up to you if you want to hurt yourself. If you practice in the cold and say to yourself that you are heating up from your qigong you are right, but what you are really doing is burning pure jet fuel and you cannot feel it, and one day your body will simply roll over and die. You have a limited amount of energy. Most of it is replacable (edit: ex. from food (or air)) but as you grow older your fuel tank gets smaller and less robust and depending on your level of development and your general constitution it becomes more easy to run out of specific kinds of fuel, whatever they are, and your heat system either fails, or ends up taking energy from another system in an unbalanced way and you can suddenly get very sick.

Since I had developed tropical pneumonia when I came to Taiwan I became very sensitive to this. It's a strange and intangible thing, like a balloon or like fuel in a tank or a furnace. If you have enough development like me you can feel it burning and you can feel when things are draining it.

Sometimes if I feel that kind of sickness coming back I just put on some extra clothing or longjohns and the feeling goes away. It's like plants growing and thriving in the sun or falling away in the winter.

After about 10 qigong movements (1 minute) my hands heat up even in cold weather (like it gets to 8 or 10 degrees here) but I now understand why I really shouldn't practice in this kind of weather. I don't know if it would be enough to damage someone's ability to feel their qi. In a young person it might delay it by 10%. Middle aged 30%. But in this situation you are already becoming sandbagged by the body, you do not want more. If you are old and try it then maybe you will get nowhere or you will get very sick.

You don't see it coming it just hits you and you collapse. There's no energy and you can die.

[wayne hansen]

Have you ever thought that if your body is so fragile It may be because of what you are training and the method you use

[Doc Stier]

For whatever it's worth, I have trained IMA styles outdoors daily in all kinds of weather during every season of the year for more than half a century to date without any resulting sickness or other ill affects. ymmv